


Odysseus Revisited

by Evil_Little_Dog



Series: Marking Time [8]
Category: Fullmetal Alchemist
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-22
Updated: 2011-11-22
Packaged: 2017-10-26 10:48:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evil_Little_Dog/pseuds/Evil_Little_Dog
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Summary:  Edward doesn't know what it's like to be home any more.<br/>Disclaimer:  Arakawa owns all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Odysseus Revisited

**Author's Note:**

> Future fic for Marking Time, and does include spoilers.  
> Originally written for the "Shades of Grey" challenge at the LJ Community Color_i_Fic, for 'grizzled'.

Home.

You almost can’t remember when you saw it last, drifting away in the ash and cinder falling from the smokestack of a locomotive. Had the sun been up? Had there been rain? Had you left in the middle of the night? No, never the night, because that would mean leaving while they slept and, even if you hated goodbyes, you always did let them wash against you like the morning sun on your shoulder as you walked away from that house where the family waited.

But that house is gone, lost to a madman (and you’d like to pay him back for destroying one of the few places that had ever felt like ‘home’ to you) and instead, there’s this place with rock walls and narrow streets and people everywhere and not even a breath of green and you wonder, how had they been able to stand it? You know the answer, though; it’s within you like it’s within them – they stood it because they needed to keep moving forward even if the reasons were obscured; carved into new figures by that howling, cutting wind. They did it because they had to, because they needed to, because they were braver than you, able to cling to each other and stay strong while you huddled away, licking your wounds in the dark. They faced the sun that you’d learned to fear.

You ache for them, as if they hold lost parts of you; you wonder if they feel the same way. Brother, you’ve never seen him like this, his arms around a woman he loves, kissing her unabashedly, his hand cupped protectively over her stomach. This is a man who was destined to be a father, you think, amazed at him, all grown up, not your little brother any more. Sister, though that word doesn’t begin to mean what she is, not to you, still obsessed with metal and wires; the way joints bend and twist, a symphony of movement she tries to recreate in steel.

They watch you, watching them and you feel like you’re behind glass that’s broken, that might shatter at any second and if it does, you’re afraid they’ll know all of the secrets you’d rather keep hidden.

But when the glass shatters, it isn’t from them, from their curious bumpings and touchings but from the casual sigh from a dog, her white muzzle grizzling up into the dome of her head, her chin landing heavily on your knee and suddenly, you know you’re

Home.


End file.
